Enviro Economics

Tell me something that doesn't require a subsidy, becuase in my thinking just about everything requires some sort of government assistance. The trade of goods is promoted with favorable trade statuses with other countries, producers are given tons of tax benefits, and even consumers recieve subsidies indirectly and occaisionally directly. I like the greedy capitalist idea, but there again there is government promotion through taxes, loans, and hopefully helpful public servant to help put the idea in motion.

Our capitalistic society would not function without the aid of government, so before railing on subsidies think of all the benefits that have come as a direct result- strong military, cheaper goods and plenty of services (water, electricity, road infrastructures), and a great divesity in the number and types of businesses.

Bottom line is that if anything requires a subsidy to exist, it doesn't work. Period.

If something is better, overall, it will survive in the market place precisely because greedy capitalists will rush in to make money on a great idea.

If no one is rushing in to make all of that filthy lucre, you can bet that there is something wrong with the idea.

I note in your article that you mention that "the generous support of governments"
being necessary for solar development in Europe. IOW the tax-payer has to artificially support something that is neither economically or technologically feasible. If solar looked even half-way feasible as a realistic substitute you couldn't beat private investors off with a stick--the money would come pouring in. Solar--at the present state of development--is nothing but another tax-payer money-pit.

Enter Your Comment

anyone that has seen windfarms in operation must have noticed that on the average a significant number of the mills are standing still. combined with a search for "windmills for sale" and the flood of used large mills for sale,gives me the strong feeling that windmills are an uncertain and very expensive way of generating electricity.

Solar technology works on an indusrtial application (see First Solar). Solar Technology has come that far which is great. Wind technology has come far enough to be competitive as a supplemental electrical power source. (see GE)..

Replacing Oil as a transportaion fuel source can be done competitively with Natural Gas (see Chesapeake and CLR)..

Hence Solar is competitive on an industrial basis as a supplemental power supply. Wind is competitive as a supplemental power supply. Natural Gas can easily replace Oil in transportation. However, it pretty much ends right there. The remaining sources of alternative fuels are 10 and 20 years off in the future.

What remains to be seen is the use of Coal. Since the USA is the Saudi Arabia of Coal, its a resource that needs more "clean" attention. Pittsburgh University, Carnegie Mellon, and West Virginia University went together and started working on cleaner coal technology 30 years ago. There is a mountain of research. With plenty of break throughs as well. One glaring research item that has become actual technology is the new high tech furnaces used to burn coal. If you merely retrofitted all coal burning electrical stations with the new furnace technology and did absolutely nothing else, you would reduce emmissions 30%. Amazing!

More comments from stupid brainwashed americans. Someone please kill me so I don't have to sit back any longer and watch generation after generation be turned into zombies.

Like the development and making of new drugs, the research, development and manufacturing of renewable energy, wind , solar, bio fuel and nuclear power require a lot of investment. In spite of large effort has been spent in Europe and US on renewable energy, these renewable energy can not effectively replaces the conventional power generation in a large scale. Even if there is satisfactory outcome on clean energy production as a replacement of conventional power generation, is the general population ready to pay much higher electricity bills during this bad time in economy ?

The only future for green energy is massive, primary, research. We currently do not have any technology that is ready to replace petroleum/coal on a large scale. We need to invest in more research on solar to make it economically viable(right now it only is with heavy subsidiaries, and the energy/resource cost of making a solar panel is very, very, high and dirty). We need to invest more in high energy physics, we need to create an equivalent of the LHC in America(heck we even have a half built shell of an equivalent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider). This type of high energy physics research could eventually lead to the discovery of a much safer and more efficient way of converting mass to energy then current Uranium/Plutonium based technology.

Arpa-E is our future, lets hope the next congress funds it well.

i pretend that i understand about this whole thing--environmental economics
bcoz i'm from china

That's because all the hype about green energy can't hide the fact that it is still an emerging technology. The hybrid cars, wind, solar and alternative fuels do not have the capabality to replace fossil fuel as the main source of energy that the industrial world uses to power their economy. And until green technology can replace fossil fuel to the extent that it can power a nation's infrastructure independent of other energy sources, green energy will remain a pipe dream that titillates the imagination of those unwilling to admit the severe limitations of atlernative energy.

What? We're not going to run our cars on all that corn?